Back when Winter Break was still young and a return to school was the last thing on anybody’s mind, Utah basketball celebrated the New Year and a new season of Pac-12 basketball by hitting the road to Northern California.
The Runnin’ Utes were hot off a roller coaster of a non-conference campaign. They started off the season ranked 16th in the AP and Coaches polls, fell completely out of the rankings after horrible loss to Miami in the Puerto-Rico Tipoff, and battled their way back into the top 25 with four straight wins, only to be dropped again after a road loss against Wichita State. Then came the team’s overtime thriller against Duke, where the Utes shocked the seventh-ranked Blue Devils in a nationally-televised game played at Madison Square Garden.
It looked like the Runnin’ Utes had finally hit their stride, just in time for the first weekend of conference play, but in their New Year’s Day opener, missed free throws and a late Stanford surge sent Utah packing with their third loss of the season. The team then traveled to Berkeley, where it struggled to find any answers for a tough Cal defense, and the team picked to finish third in the Pac-12 left the Golden State with nothing to show for it but a pair of losses. The Utes only had a few days to figure out how to halt their two-game slide before traveling to Colorado to face its Rocky Mountain rival.
In a defensive stalemate, a last-second layup from Utah’s Lorenzo Bonam gave the Runnin’ Utes a hard-fought conference win. These first few games have shed a lot of light on the state of the Utes, and it is clear that the team’s path to the Pac-12 Tournament will be full of challenges — there will be no easy victories this season. The Runnin’ Utes, however, are not the only contender to suffer from a rough start to conference play.
Defending Pac-12 champion Arizona had to battle hard in a wild road victory over rival Arizona State to open its conference slate and then went 0-for-2 on the Wildcats’ trip to Los Angeles last weekend, dropping a close game to UCLA and then getting bested by USC in a tremendous quadruple-overtime stunner. Likewise, Cal lost both games in a road trip to Oregon by single digits after beating Colorado and Utah to begin the season. Of the 20 Pac-12 matchups played this season, a whopping 13 of them have been decided by 10 points or fewer. There is an incredible amount of parity between teams this season, which has been making for a highly entertaining (and frequently frustrating) season for fans of all teams.
Currently, Washington and USC sit atop the conference leaderboard, with the Huskies boasting the league’s only perfect record against conference opponents. These wins were far from easy, as all of them came by fewer than four points and UW’s games against UCLA and Washington went to double- and single-overtime respectively. The Trojans, who were picked 10th in the preseason conference standings, have looked impressive in almost every Pac-12 game so far, which include double-digit victories over Washington State and Arizona State, a two-point loss to top dog Washington and a two-point victory against Arizona in the previously mentioned 4OT bout.
This early in the season, rankings don’t count for much. When the conference tournament rolls around, there is no telling who will take the crown, but if the first two weeks has made anything perfectly clear, it is that a crazy and unpredictable docket of Pac-12 hoops lies ahead.
@tylerfcrum